CheckBox Support
As of Q2 2011, RadComboBox introduces simple CheckBox support. You can enable the CheckBox mode by setting the RadComboBox's CheckBoxes property to true.
When the CheckBox functionality is enabled, the behavior of the RadComboBox is different than the standard dropdown behavior—the selection of items should be interpreted in terms of checking. The user is now checking items instead of selecting.
This means that you need to use different events and API to work with checked items:
-
The client-side events OnClientItemChecking and OnClientItemChecked should be handled instead of
OnClientSelectedIndexChangedandOnClientSelectedIndexChanging. -
The server-side ItemChecked event must be used instead of
SelectedIndexChanged. -
To get checked items on the client, use the get_checkedItems() method instead of
get_selectedItem(). -
To get checked items on the server, use the CheckedItems property instead of
SelectedItem. -
To control the checked state of an item on the client, use its
set_checked()andget_checked()methods. -
To control the checked state of an item on the server, use its
Checkedproperty.
Checkbox Support Related Properties
-
Checked—controls whether a particular item will be checked or not.
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CheckedItems—a collection property, available both client and server side.
-
EnableCheckAllItemsCheckBox—when set to
true, aCheck AllCheckBox appears in the drop-down above all the items. It enables check / uncheck-all functionality for the RadComboBox items.The "Check All" CheckBox is not a RadComboBox item. It is a feature implemented entirely on the client and does a post-back to the server on checked / unchecked events only when the AutoPostBack property of the RadComboBox object is set to
true. -
CheckedItemsTexts—receives two predefined values:
-
FitInInput - default value. When this value is set and the text of the checked items exceeds the width of the input, it is replaced by
"X items checked". -
DisplayAllInInput —the text of all checked items is displayed in the input of the RadComboBox.
-
-
DataCheckedField—The field name in the data source that defines the checked state of the RadComboBox items. It must be of type
boolean.
Checkbox Support Related Events
Client-side events:
-
OnClientItemChecking—occurs when a particular item is about to be checked. This event could be cancelled.
-
OnClientItemChecked—occurs when a particular item is checked.
Server-side events:
- ItemChecked—occurs when a particular item is checked. In order for this event to be fired, AutoPostBack property should be set to True.
User Experience
The text of the checked items is shown in the input of the RadComboBox, separated by commas. When the text exceeds the width of the input, it is replaced by "X items checked" where X denotes the number of items being checked, unless the CheckedItemsTexts property is set to DisplayAllInInput. When all of the items are checked, "All items checked" message appears in the input.
In order to access the checked items on the client-side use the get_checkedItems() method of the RadComboBox's client-side object.
When working with the RadComboBox on the server-side note that the SelectedValue property is empty, because there is no single selected item. If you want to access the values of the checked items the aforementioned CheckedItems property should be used.
The newly added messages as "All items checked", "X items checked" and "Check All" could be localized.
Limitations
There are a few scenarios that are not supported when CheckBox support is enabled:
-
The MarkFirstMatch and Filter features are not supported. The reason is that the CheckBox selection is different from the standard RadComboBox selection—there is no single selected item.
-
Load On Demand is not supported. The reason is that RadComboBox items loaded on demand are not accessible on the server which is needed for the CheckBox feature. A possible approach to overcome this limitation is replacing the RadComboBox with a RadMultiSelect control with enabled Virtualization as demonstrated in the MultiSelect/Virtualization online demo.